Thread

Pentagon says overreliance on AI contributed to missile strike on Iran school

974 points · 553 comments · devonnull

legitster · 1790105097 · focus · HN ↗
> It found the U.S. “failed in its obligation to do everything feasible to verify” that the school was a military objective and that the failure “went beyond mere negligence.” The report said the United States “directed the strikes at the building of the school while being aware of a substantial risk of striking a civilian object and acting recklessly as regards the possibility that this would happen.”
Reading the details, "AI" doesn't really seem like the culprit -it's a scapegoat.
The intelligence that it was no longer a military target never entered the target database, the team that was responsible for vetting the target list was gutted, and said team was never even consulted.
The White House wanted 1000 targets and pulled from their database without any due diligence. Whether it was an AI call or an SQL query - this was from pure human maliciousness and incompetence.
1. bix6 · 1790106214 · focus · HN ↗
  <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/hegseth-civilian-harm-mitigation-response-trump-defense-department" rel="nofollow">https://www.propublica.org/article/hegseth-civilian-harm-mit...
  1. legitster · 1790106893 · focus · HN ↗
    > “No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement,” - Hegseth
    ...
    > Hegseth and the commander in charge of the Iran operation, Adm. Brad Cooper, were questioned about the strike before Congress. Hegseth said the U.S. does not target civilians and would investigate
    So the administration does not intentionally target civilians, they have just stopped caring about who a civilian is.
    noncoml · 1790108022 · focus · HN ↗
    Not sure wtf “politically correct” in the context of rules of engagement even means.
    What a fucking moron
    cogman10 · 1790108301 · focus · HN ↗
    Instead of worrying about woke things like "is this person actually a combatant actively fighting" they want the much simpler rule of "everyone we kill was actually a terrorist that deserves to die".
    Basically they stopped caring those woke UN rules about war crimes.
    toyg · 1790118291 · focus · HN ↗
    Hey, it's worked for a certain allied country in the Middle East for decades at this point...
    giva · 1790151235 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_body_count_controversy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_body_count_controv...

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